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In the US, a woman named Patricia Lanza has made popular Fukuoka Masanobu’s techniques of “do-nothing” farming–she followed, in turn, the earlier work of a woman named Ruth Stout.

Her concept selects and adapts particular features of FM’s work, and is known as “lasagna gardening.” It’s called this because it starts off with sheet mulching and wild mulching–laying sheets of cardboard over grass to tame it and get rid of weeds, and using plant matter on the spot for compost, letting it have its unruly way, rather than putting it in a tidy (“”) pile in a corner to gestate. It’s a kind of translated version of do-nothing farming that still involves some of the processes (sheet mulching, notably, and lack of interest in tilling). But it also drops some key features, such as the compelling autobio, the relation to a general critique of modernity, and questions about the role of the local vis-à-vis spiritual/mystical/Romantic/poetic histories.

Is anything added? Anything lost? How does she imagine the task of adapting, localizing, translating? And what does “culture” (i.e. from cultivare, the word meaning ‘to grow’) mean to her, do you think?

Ozu Yasujirō
postwar (mostly) director beloved by art critics and cinephiles for his “quiet” family dramas. Is seen to break the stranglehold of Hollywood cinematic codes while remaining lyrical and poetic. Early silent films are quite funny.Library: Good Morning, EA collection @ Doheny, JDVD 0116Online: Midnight Eye review of Good Morning: http://www.midnighteye.com/reviews/gmorning.shtml

So the reader is now available at Magic Machines, at the UV. It runs about $17 for part 1; part 2 is slightly longer, but not much.

I had a long conversation with the owner, when I turned it in. He basically was reluctant to print it at all, if the whole class does not use it. (He is familiar with ARLT courses & sizes.) Apparently he loses a bunch of money and gets lots of random orders at random times, when people get sick of printing and want to buy the reader at sporadic times during the semester. This makes him unhappy. The upshot is that we’re just going to do it with the reader–I did split it into two, though, to make it easier to handle. Pick it up and read the Fukuoka and Shimazono for next Thursday.

The reader is assembled; it took more time to save money than I had thought. It is quite large, and going to the copy shop Monday, as they are closed for the day. You won’t need it until the week after next, but here is the next batch of readings, and a final syllabus, with more specific due dates. I swapped a couple of readings out, after reading the info you all wrote on Thursday, to incorporate things people were curious about.

Shimazono reading (new): on food and new religions/philosophies as AKMs, or “alternative knowledge movements”: 3_shimazono

Questions to think about: how does Fukuoka resemble kinds of counter-culture you may be familiar with? Why does he term his movement a “revolution”? And what is alternative about the kinds of knowledge Shimazono talks about?